My sister and I got a Solicitor to sort one for our mum, this was just before Covid lockdown struck. Financial and Health & Welfare . We probably could have done ourselves but wanted joint PA.
We paid by sperate cheques for the Office of Public Guardian, one for him.
Sadly a few months later Mum passed away but we had not had any correspondence from OPG.
I phoned Solicitors office, they told me due to Covid they knew OPG had a massive workload (not surprised) with backlog. His office told me to ring direct as it still might be waiting to be processed, this had taken about 4 - 5 months.
Correct it was was due to be finalised within the next few days.
They stopped the process, sent everything back to us including the original cheques.
Brilliant service and really nice staff.